Venturing into the unknown, God has so much for each of us—way beyond our wildest imaginations. I’m living proof of that. Who knew, but God, how the experience of prison and the subsequent events of my life would lead me to a place of surrender. A different kind of surrender than to the U.S. Marshal office in Philly. God created me to be a wounded healer making all things new.
We journey through this life not understanding the way things are. Many of those things are just not knowable.
As John Eldredge reminds us:
Our false self demands a formula before he’ll engage; he wants a guarantee of success; and mister, you aren’t going to get one. So there comes a time in a man’s life when he’s got to break away from all that and head off into the unknown with God. This is a vital part of our journey and if we balk here, the journey ends. Before the moment of Adam’s greatest trial God provided no step-by-step plan, gave no formula for how he was to handle the whole mess. That was not abandonment; that was the way God honored Adam. You are a man; you don’t need me to hold you by the hand through this. You have what it takes. What God did offer Adam was friendship. He wasn’t left alone to face life; he walked with God in the cool of the day, and there they talked about love and marriage and creativity, what lessons he was learning and what adventures were to come. This is what God is offering to us as well. As Oswald Chambers says, ‘There comes the baffling call of God in our lives also. The call of God can never be stated explicitly; it is implicit. The call of God is like the call of the sea, no one hears it but the one who has the nature of the sea in him. It cannot be stated definitely what the call of God is to, because his call is to be in comradeship with himself for his own purposes, and the test is to believe that God knows what he is after.’ (My Utmost for His Highest, emphasis added)[i]
The words of God are his promises to you. Discovering them is like discovering a great treasure trove. As you keep digging into it, you will find more and more amazing and beautiful treasures. This leads the psalmist on to say, “Seven times a day I praise you” (Psalm 119:164).
Trust in God’s promises and wait patiently Abraham waited for 25 years. Joseph waited 13 years. Moses waited 25 years. Jesus waited 30 years. If God makes you wait, you are in good company.
I have often found the gap between the promise of God and its fulfillment to be much longer than I had anticipated. I am learning to be more patient. God’s promises to us are the anchor of our souls (Hebrews 6:19). They are solid and secure. He keeps his word, even when it seems impossible, even when the circumstances seem to point to the opposite. Delay does not negate the promises of God.
[i] John Eldredge, Wild at Heart